Chrétien de Troyes, the father of romance, created a genre, the romance, which he perfected in the course of five major poems. He was the first writer to record the story of Lancelot and Guinevere; he was the first writer who set down the story of Perceval and the quest for the Holy Grail. The first problem that confronts translators of his poetry is the need to enter entirely into the world of the original author and render the story faithfully. This article concentrates on how one proves to be faithful to the author’s world when translating and not making it distant in time, because this makes the translation almost anachronistic. Also, when taking a poem from the Middle Ages, it ponders whether to give the poems in poetry or prose.